The big jokes of this one-reel comedy from Stan Laurel's days as a solo leading comic seems to be that he is an Upper Class Twit, complete with top hat and fur coat, who for some reason has showed up for work at a coal mine. That's a pretty funny image -- as is the hat check girl in front of the mine -- and it sounds like a potential ingredient for a good single reel from the Roach studio at the time, if not starring Laurel then perhaps Paul Parrott or Snub Pollard.
However, after one funny gag where Stan keeps trying to hang his coat and hat on the outstretched arm of his boss (James Finlayson in a smaller-than-usual moustache, but the pacing her doesn't really let him do any of his distinctive reaction-based comedy) as the mine elevator goes up and down, this short doesn't really do much else with the concept.
Instead it devolves into Stan filling in a series of standard gags set around a mine, pushing one end of a cart while somebody pushes the other, flirting with a girl who has shown up for some reason while he should be working, accidentally hitting somebody with his pick and starting a fight, &c.
The highlight of the short comes when it slows everything down for a great pantomime it in which Stan sits down to relax and get his tobacco fix. The oil dripping from his 1920s-style miner's hat make his pipe explode, then two of his cigarettes. And it makes his chewing tobacco taste decidedly off. This is a wonderful extended bit of pantomime which reminds me of Stan's great extended scene of eating wax fruit in "Sons of the Desert" after the formation of Laurel and Hardy.
Unfortunately, this scene is miles ahead of the rest of the short, which apart from a couple of nice bits, it has to be admitted is fairly run of the mill.
